Master’s Thesis: Optimizing performance of a dry bulk terminal by integrating the seaside and the stockyard

In this research, different solution strategies are presented to create complete equipment schedules for dry bulk terminals. At the seaside, this contains the berth allocation problem and the quay crane assignment problem. At the stockyard, the stacker/reclaimer assignment, the stockpile allocation and the belt conveyor routing are considered. An existing heuristic to solve the seaside problem for container terminals is adjusted for dry bulk terminals. The adjusted method performs close to optimal. Next, a scheduling method for the stockyard equipment is presented. Finally, three solution strategies are developed to integrate the seaside scheduling problem with the stockyard scheduling problem to compute a complete dry bulk terminal schedule. The first method computes feasible schedules in relative short computation time by considering individual vessels sequentially, where the second method constructs multiple schedules and creates a lower and upper bound. The third method integrates the complete terminal and performs well. The results prove that a wellperforming integration between the seaside and stockyard is possible. This integration can be used to obtain good equipment schedules for the complete dry bulk terminal.